Justice and Inclusion: Canon Peter Dobson’s Final Sermon

Published July 2024

Hundreds gathered on Sunday, 21 July, for Canon Peter Dobson’s final service: The First Choral Evensong on the Feast of Mary Magdalene. Below is the sermon he delivered during this service. Peter will be greatly missed, but we know that he and Matt, who accompanies him there, will be a tremendous blessing to the people of his next parish, All Saints Fulham.

“Amidst the absolutely justified and very well-informed rejoicing in the announcement of my successor a few weeks ago, I was saddened to read one less than charitable comment on social media criticising this Cathedral and its mission. It said this, “Social justice and inclusion rather than evangelism. Says it all.” Well, it is certainly a comment that in itself says rather a lot! It presents a rather sad, maybe even careless, understanding of what it means to be and to bear God’s Good News for the world and those of us in it.

“What of the God portrayed in our first reading this evening, who, even when there was change to bring and hard things to say, amidst all that was wrong, did what others didn’t expect and prioritised being ‘a refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needy in their distress, a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from the heat’? What of the God who was and is at work ‘stilling the song of the ruthless’, wiping away tears, and taking away the disgrace people are made to feel, which diminishes them and, even if they have done wrong, reduces them to less than they are, as opposed to helping them to be all that they could be?

“Today, as Matt and I say goodbye to this special place and its precious people, sitting in my stall for the last time, I’m reminded of the research a good friend of ours here did into the Chemist’s Window, which is behind and (in so many ways) the backdrop for my stall and the ministry I have been privileged to have entrusted to me for a time.”

Image: The Chemist’s Window, which can be found in the South Quire Aisle.

“Joseph Garnet died in 1861. As the name of the window suggests, he was a chemist with a shop around from here, on the street called Side. He was a faithful worshipper at what was St Nicholas’ Church. It was only when he died, when he was no longer able to do it, that it came to light how many people he had been using his time and money to help. A secret philanthropist, his friends who worshipped here with him, recognised that, amongst all of the other monuments, windows and ledger stones bought by rich people and their families for their memory, Joseph should be remembered here too. He having used his money to help others, his friends crowdfunded for the window. The question was, what story should the window tell? … Something from the Gospels and something about how Joseph had lived that Good News.

“Well, they chose Matthew’s Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, one of the notably few occasions when Jesus talks about the end of time and what our fate might be, which, as Lee [Batson, Dean of Newcastle] reminded us at the Ordination of Deacons three weeks ago, tells us will be much less about the number of people we’ve brought to faith and more about how we’ve served the hungry and naked, the poor and imprisoned, all about how we have (or have not) seen Christ in the people who have been made to feel least, last and lost.

“What is striking about the Chemist’s Window is that the face of the person helping those in need, in each case, is the same. It is the face of Joseph Garnet, and the backdrop of these important scenes is his chemist’s shop, Side, and the street he lived in. Sitting underneath that window each day, one can’t help but be challenged whether anyone could ever begin to think of placing your face, our faces, the streets I and we live and work in, on any depiction of that important story, which, for Jesus, was one measure (if not the measure) of whether we are or are not Good News?!

“As St Paul says in this evening’s second reading, we are blessed, and we become a blessing when we share one another’s afflictions and in that bring consolation. These, St Paul says to us tonight, are, so often, the first steps on the road to salvation and at the heart of how we keep one another on that important road.

“At times it can so often feel that we are not able to do enough or to be enough to make a difference. And I’m all too conscious standing here tonight of the times when that has been true when I really have not been all that you have needed, the times I have done the wrong thing and let you down. And for that, I am truly sorry.

“But there are other times still when I, like the rest of us, have beaten myself up or become despondent, trying to live up to a standard Jesus never asked us to, when I have overcomplicated what it means to be the Church and confused what the Good News looks like to make myself feel better, falling into the trap of thinking it is all about having more, more people and more resources in the Church, in particular.

“I’m grateful to another friend who reminded me this week of some words of Michael Ramsay, words about priesthood but equally applicable to how we might all think about living out our faith; he writes: ‘Amidst the vast scene of the world’s problems and tragedies you may feel that your own ministry seems so small, so insignificant, so concerned with the trivial. What a tiny difference it can make to the world that you should run a youth club, or preach to a few people in a church, or visit families with seemingly small result. But consider: the glory of Christianity is its claim that small things really matter and that the small company, the very few, the one man, the one woman, the one child are of infinite worth to God. Consider our Lord himself. Amidst a vast world with its vast empires and vast events and tragedies our Lord devoted himself to individual men and women, often giving hours and time to the very few or to the one man or woman.’

“Tonight, we celebrate Mary Magdalene, one of the single individuals to whom Jesus devoted time, and by that investment, it’s small acts, changed her life, bringing healing, while others, and even the Church as an institution, instead, told tales and made-up gossip about her. Knowing nothing of her trauma in the way Jesus did, people instead portrayed her as sexually immoral as opposed to someone in great need who was seeking understanding. Thinking back to that comment on social media, it was Jesus’ investment that led Mary Magdalene, of course, to be the first evangelist of the resurrection, but how might that story have been different if Jesus hadn’t thought her inclusion, and that justice for her mattered most of all, before anything else?”

Image: St Mary Magdalene depicted in our Chapel of the Resurrection window and medieval Thornton Brass.

“It has been a tremendous privilege, over these last years, to play my small part in the ongoing story of how this extraordinary place not only tells the story of Jesus but lives it. I’ve been so conscious that long before me and certainly after, this place has had (as Joseph Garnet reminds us) and will go on having, a passion for living out the Gospel by being Good News, by giving ourselves to being with and working alongside those too often marginalised, in the confidence that this is not just a legitimate calling but the priority for those of us who dare to call ourselves Christian.

“On Thursday evening, we gathered here to celebrate the culmination of our ‘Stories of Sanctuary’, weekly workshops over the last three months where a range of different people have shared stories of how they have found light in the dark, a shelter in the storms of life, in this place and our city. From those seeking asylum and refuge to those living on our streets or struggling with addiction, a wide range of us have been helped to put our experience into words, turning them into poetry and song, with musicians helping us to put them to music.

“I want to end with the words of one of those people, a young woman who, having fled torture and found safety here, was then made homeless in this city. Since then, through the different activities we have co-created with those in dark times, this young woman has found a place of worship and inspiration, has bravely told her story in a Christmas carol service, and exhibited her art before her talent was noticed and some of her work exhibited and then sold in Fenwick’s. Now she has written a song, her experience of the ministry of this place and its people, entitled ‘The Invitation’, an invitation I know and trust you will continue to accept for yourselves and extend to others here, ensuring that the Gospel and its Good News goes on beginning by attending to what feels small and marginal, in seeking to include and bring justice for all people: